Top 10 Raspberry Pi Zero Projects That Make Use Of Its Small Stature

The Raspberry Pi has long been the hobbyist choice for DIY electronics projects. The Raspberry Pi Zero, which is about the size of a stick of gum, is relatively cheap and has it's own special use cases though. Here are ten of our favourite projects that make use of its size.

9. Play NPR Anywhere with the Push of a Button

If you're a big NPR fan, then you probably love the NPR One app, which plays a stream of curated NPR podcasts at random. You might be surprised that that streams available from the command line, which means you can access in a Raspberry Pi Zero.

The natural idea for a project here makes a tiny little NPR One radio using a Raspberry Pi Zero. You get buttons to skip a story and pause the stream, while the whole thing gets crammed into a fancy little DIY case.

7. Build a Tiny Power Supply-Sized Computer

The idea here is simple. You set up the Raspberry Pi Zero with SSH or VNC, then mount it directly to a power supply with Sugru. Now, you can just plug it into the wall and control it remotely. This makes it practically invisible.

6. Build a Mobile Library

Essentially, you just turn your Raspberry Pi Zero into a Wi-Fi access point then share your own library of DRM-free books, magazines, PDFs, or whatever else you have. Obviously, you should keep this legal, but it's a fun way to share your own stuff.

5. Play Any Simpsons Episode (or Any TV Show) At Random

If you've ditched cable and gone full streaming with your media, you might still miss the days of catching a random episode of your favourite show on TV. The Raspberry Pi Zero can bring that back.

In this project, they use episodes of The Simpsons stored on an SD card. With a custom script, you can click a button and it plays an episode at random. You can add any media you want here, including multiple shows if you really wanted, but The Simpsons are a fantastic choice.

3. Make the World's Smallest (Probably) MAME Cabinet

MAME cabinets are awesome, but they're massive. For the complete opposite approach, you can use a Raspberry Pi Zero to make one that's about as small as the Pi itself.

You'll need a few materials to make this sucker work, including a 3D printed case, but in the end cabinet is completely functional, which means you'll have the best desk accessory in the office.

2. Build a Miniature Dongle Computer

While the Pi Zero makes a nifty little computer as it is, it makes an even better dongle computer. This way, you can attach it to any other computer you have, then it will tether itself directly so you don't have to add in a USB or any networking.

The best part of this project is the fact you don't need yet another mouse, screen, or keyboard sitting around. Just jam in into your normal desktop computer and you're good to go.

1. Cram a Raspberry Pi Zero Inside an Old School Controller

We all know the Raspberry Pi makes an excellent DIY video game console. The setup process only takes a few minutes, and the Raspberry Pi Zero is totally capable of handling older games from the SNES era and earlier. The whole project is even better when the whole system is inside a controller.

Comments

Great piece of kit (so I'm told) and I'd love to try out some of these projects but for two small problems that you seem to have overlooked in your US-centric article:-

1 "...Raspberry Pi Zero, which is about the size of a stick of gum, and just five bucks..." So we'll say that US$5 = ~AU$6.70, but more to the point, the cheapest anyone that I can find in Australia is $35 as part of a 'kit' that includes 2 adaptors worth (IMHO) about another $5. Anyone for 'Australian Tax'?

and

2 Nobody in Australia has any in stock. I have just tried 4 outlets, (2 of whom are official importers - RS and Element14). 3 say 'Out of stock' and the last one just denies that such a beast exists.

This situation has existed since the thing was 'released' two years ago. It costs a lot more than $5 USD to make, but if you want to sell it under license from the Raspberry Pi foundation, you have to sell it for $5 USD.

It's available only through four retailers, two in the UK and two in the USA. They each get stock once every four weeks, and all sell "one per customer". The board its self sells out very quickly, meaning you have to buy the kit with the overpriced accessories just so the retailer can make money. But, they still sell quantity one per customer, so Australian resellers can't buy them, even if they are willing to pay twice the RRP.

It's not an 'Australian Tax', it's a great example of why we have laws in Australia preventing wholesalers from dictating what retailers can sell their products for.

If the Raspberry Pi Foundation had just let the manufacturers/retailers set the prices (rather than hold on to the claim that they made a "$5 USD Computer"), it'd be in stock everywhere for about $10USD and available in Australia for about $25 AUD.

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